Once upon a time two lawyers fell in love across a courtroom...Gabrielle Ginsberg was a public defender with plenty of nerve, and Braden Pierce was an assistant district attorney with a whole lot of swagger. Gabrielle wanted Braden and Braden wanted Gabrielle.And Cameron wanted Gabrielle.And Marla wanted Braden.And Cole wanted Gabrielle.And Mrs. Mason wanted Braden.And an anonymous letter writer wanted to keep Gabrielle and Braden apart.Together Gabrielle and Braden discovered many important things, like which doors at the courthouse actually locked, and that desks could be useful for more than writing. They also found out that the path of love was not always smooth, and it was sometimes tread upon by some really wacky people, like a confused fanny grabber, an eighty-two year old pothead, and a gentleman who threw a wine and cheese party in his pants. Could true love overcome a lack of privacy, interference by jealous rivals, and the insanity of the criminal court system?

I really tried to make myself finish this book. It's only 242 pages, a fairly bite-sized novel, which would have only taken me approximately 4 to 5 hours to complete. Except that that would have been about 4 to 5 hours too long, and 200 pages too many. I might have sighed and rolled my eyes a few times before finally throwing in the towel after giving the book another hour of reading time and still finding myself frustrated. And to be totally honest, I have several other books I'm more interested in reading to waste anymore time on this one.

This book was just ridiculously tedious, boring, and overly juvenile. For a bunch of up and coming, hotshot lawyers in their mid-to-late twenties, our main couple and their friends all behaved like a squealy gaggle of teenagers. The squealy kind who sit around gushing about the new girlfriend or the new boyfriend. I'm not trying to stereotype or anything, but to be totally honest, grown men don't talk to each other the way Braden, Mark, and Adam do; and neither do grown women, if we really want to be honest with ourselves.

When in the universe of ever has one bro commented to another bro, that third bro's new relationship of two days is "strangely adorable"?

And then, whenever Gabrielle talked about Braden, I kept picturing that one girl in high school who got all excited because her crush happened to walk by and say "hi" to her, or picked up her pencil and handed it back to her with a dimply smile. She got so super gushy about the fact that she flirted with Braden... and "OMG!" he flirted back!

Maybe I'm just irritated, but this book just didn't do it for me, and pulling the DNF trigger will probably save it from getting a one star review in the long run.

I'll admit that the first chapter was pretty cute, with the silly court cases and Gabrielle's strange defensive arguments. But after that, the book just started rolling downhill. I just couldn't make myself continue on. I couldn't get past the squealiness of it all. And while this might seem a bit over-extreme, I couldn't get past Gabrielle's use of the word 'tummy,' three times within one chapter, to describe her state of nervousness around Braden.

And even if I could have gotten past the squealiness, I'm not sure I could have unburied myself from all the details. All the painstakingly, unnecessary details of every part of a first date conversation that sounded awfully similar to a character biography description. All the tedious, overly wordy details about every action and every back story and every little step of Gabrielle's day. All the extra, tangential details to describe the very mundane, banal evening of a date and a subsequent group get together, none of which was even remotely interesting.

Then there was the boob scene. The boob scene?! I swear, I might have seen that scene in a high school flick or something, it was so juvenile. "Could you just show me your boobies before the guys get here? Please? And let me touch them?" Well, he didn't actually say those words in the book, but he might have done so in my head with the way the scene was written.

Anyway...

Maybe this book is just not my cuppa, and maybe I'm just a bit far removed from my mid-to-late twenties. Except... that I have read books about characters in their mid-to-late twenties, and they don't act like this. In fact, I've read books about teenagers who don't act like this.

Finally, the book tries really hard to be witty and cute. It's not really, but points for effort, I guess.

Maybe this book gets better. Maybe it gets worse. Some other reviews I happened to skim mentions that the second half loses appeal. I'm not sticking around to find out. I've got other books I'd rather be reading.

My first DNF of the year 2017. I don't like to DNF, but sometimes it just has to happen.